Need good pro marijuana material for debate

I'm on another board debating the case for legalization. It seems the propaganda machine is alive and well even today. I'm needing some pro argument material to help with my efforts to inform the unaware and brainwashed. Most of the claims made, I can dispute with little effort, but I'd like to have some extremely good material (Pro marijuana) to help put out the flames of ignorance.

Anything marijuana related will help, but I'd like some cold hard 'facts' about the benefits of legalization, and marijuana use, both for recreational, and medicinal purposes.

Btw, I didn't start the debate, but I joined it in defence of the sacred herb, lol!

Just need some help...I want to support the cause, and do something beneficial.

My website CarltheCannabis.com has some good straightforward pro-marijuana information.

General Info: http://www.carlthecannabis.com/truth.php
War on Drugs: http://www.carlthecannabis.com/war.php
Medical: http://www.carlthecannabis.com/medical.php

Here's some various pieces of factual information:



"Interestingly, in a 1988 ruling that marijuana should be reclassified to allow medicinal use, Drug Enforcement Administration Judge Francis Young concluded that "In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.""

"The evidence in this record [9-6-88 ruling] clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record."

In 1999, a White House-commissioned Institute of Medicine report declared that, ''Nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety . . . all can be mitigated by marijuana.'' And in 2002, a Canadian Senate committee concluded that ''there are clear . . . indications of the therapeutic benefits of marijuana."

In 1982 an 18-member committee of the National Academy of Sciences who had studied the drug laws for four years unanimously advocated decriminalizing marijuana, and eventually legalizing and regulating it, only to have Reaganâ??s science adviser, Dr. Frank Press, repudiate their report and successfully pressure the media not to publicize it.

In December 1997, the UN World Health Organization received a report it had commissioned on marijuana. Unknown officials of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN International Drug Control Programme browbeat the WHO into withholding parts of it from publication. The deleted portions stated that cannabis is not addictive, does not lead to use of other drugs, poses no risk of lung damage or other serious long-term health problems, is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, and would remain so even if it were used as much as these two legal drugs.

Nixon had appointed Pennsylvania governor Raymond Schaffer chairman of a commission to study the effects of marijuana on society, perhaps unaware that Shaffer was primed to do an honest job because heâ??d been made to look like fool by an anti-drug zealot a few years before. He had called for new a enforcement effort against LSD after six college students had gone blind from staring at the sun while trippingâ??only to find that the tale was a hoax made up by Dr. Norman Yoder of the state Welfare Departmentâ??s Office of the Blind. The Shaffer report found marijuana to be the safest of all popular drugs, including the legal ones, and recommended immediate decriminalization. Nixon ceremoniously threw it in the Oval Office wastebasket without opening it.

The journal PHARMACOLOGICAL REVIEWS reports that decades of research prove that, "Compared with legal drugs...marijuana does not pose greater risks." Yet based upon mortality statistics, we can safely con- clude that cannabis is one of the safest medical drugs known, for, while prescription drugs, defined as safe by the FDA, kill up to 27,000 and aspirin up to 1,000 Americans per year, cannabis kills 0 per year .

In the 20 years since DARE began, scientific evaluation studies have consistently shown that DARE is ineffective in reducing the use of alcohol and drugs and is sometimes even counterproductive -- worse than doing nothing. That's the conclusion of the U.S. General Accounting Office, the U.S. Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Department of Education, among many others.

IT'S NOT WORKING

In fact, marijuana enforcement has had no discernable long-term impact on marijuana availability or use. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, teenagers report that marijuana has surpassed tobacco and alcohol as the easiest drug to obtain. This result is hardly surprising, givern that annual federal data compiled by the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future project reports that an estimated 86 percent of 12th graders say that marijuana is "fairly easy" or "very easy to get". This percentage has remained virtually unchanged since the mid-1970s - despite remarkably increased marijuana penalties, enforcement, and the prevalence of anti-marijuana propaganda since that time.

The percentage of adolescents experimenting with marijuana has also held steady over the long-term. According to annual data compiled by Monitoring the Future, 47.3 percent of 12th graders reported having used marijuana in 1975. Despite the billions of dollars spent on drug enforcement and drug education efforts (such as the federally funded DARE program) since that time, today's number (for the Class of 2004) is 49 percent.

In addition, according to data compiled by the federal National Household on Drug Abuse survey, an estimated 2.6 million Americans tried marijuana for the first time in the year 2003, up fromt 1.5 million in 1990 and 0.8 million in 1965. Today, nearly one out of every two American adults acknowledges they have used marijuana, up from fewer than one in three in 1983.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF THE DRUG WAR

1. Drug laws cause crime. According to Stossel, crimes happen because "drug sellers can't rely on the police to protect their property; they form gangs and arm themselves. Drug buyers--steal to pay the high black market prices. The government says alcohol is as addictive as heroin, but no one robs 7 Elevens to get a six pack of Bud. It's our own laws that cause the crime."

2. Corruption: "The drug black market distracts police from pursuing other sorts of crimes, and sometimes corrupts them. We demand that cops who make $25,000 a year turn down $25,000 bribes. Not all do." As Detroit police chief Jerry Oliver puts it, "With all of the money, with all of the cash, it's easy....to purchase police officers, to purchase prosecutors, to purchase judges."

3.The drug war tells kids in poor neighborhoods that work is for suckers. "Why take an entry-level job at McDonald's when your little brother can make more as a drug lookout?, says Stossel. He adds, "Why work at all when the role models in the neighborhood--the coolest people, the ones with the best cars and the best clothes--are criminals?" Stossel points out that California Judge James Gray has concluded money made from the sale of illegal drugs is a bigger problem than the drugs themselves.

4. The creation of unbelievably rich criminal gangs. Stossel says, "We forget that alcohol prohibition created Al Capone. The gangs we're creating now are even richer, probably rich enough to buy nuclear weapons. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden have been funded partly by drug money.

Try

http://www.hempevolution.org/

WWW.LEAP.CC

www.jackherer.com

This is one of the best researched sites on the net. A tactic I use is to find the most adamant, loud mouth prohibitionist and ask them whether they are well informed on marijuana prohibition. When they say yes, lean back and say "Fine, then tell us about the decorticator." When they can't you have them by their balls. I beat a judge this way and really made him think again about his position. This site will give you most of the historical ammo you need.

http://www.sierratimes.com/03/11/07/article_kubby.htm

Pot cures cancer and the government has known for over thirty years. So much for marijuana not being medicine.

http://apps.nevadaappeal.com/na_poll...thread&order=0

We recently had this same discussion on a site in Nevadda where we shut the prohibitionists down, hard. Worth the read to see how their arguements were handled.

Good luck!

Thank you! Wish me luck, haha! What's luck got to do with it? I'll let the truth speak for itself...

Great stuff, guys! :thumbsup:

Much appreciated,